The Dictionary of Human Geography

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states in which many functions traditionally

performed by the state are now the purview of

private companies or non-state institutions

(Ward, 2005b; seeprivatization). The result

is a reduction in central state power, as states

are not so much losing power as a result of

globalization but redefining their form and

function in a new climate of capital accumula-

tion (Sassen, 1996). cf

Suggested reading

Brenner, Jessop, Jones and MacLeod (2003);

Clark and Dear (1984); Painter (1995); Van

Creveld (1999).

state apparatus The interacting suite of

institutions and organizations through which

statepower is exercised. The state apparatus

serves three broad functions: manufacturing

social consensus; securing the conditions of

production by facilitating investment and the

reproduction of the labour force; and creating

social integration by promoting the welfare of

all social groups. The suite consists of manifold

institutions and organizations including the

police, thehealthservice, education, fiscal

regulation and elections. Neo-liberal policies

(seeneo-liberalism) have required changes

in the relative power of different institutions

to promoteeconomic growthat the expense

of welfare, with consequent geographies of

uneven life opportunities (Peck, 1996). cf

Suggested reading

Clark and Dear (1984).

state of nature This phrase featured

prominently in the writings of early liberal

political philosophers, including most fam-

ously Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Baruch

(Benedictus) Spinoza and Jean-Jacques

Rousseau (see liberalism). All were con-

cerned with establishing in their own fashion

the moral basis ofgovernanceand a civil order

based in part on their assumptions about what

life in the state of nature was like. The phrase

points to a kind of reference point or natural

(universal) order from which to theorize about

the social (Barry, 1999), but it also marks a

boundary (imagined and real, historical and

geographical) between a condition of being in

or of nature to one of being outside of or apart

from nature. Emergence from this state of

nature, so these discourses suggest, establishes

the need for a ‘social contract’, while the par-

ticular character of the state of nature (benign,

violent etc.) also shapes the character of the

required social contract. When taken less

literally as a specific time or place, the state of

nature serves as a kind of imagined historical

geography corresponding to an anarchic soci-

ety, absent the rule oflawand without a mod-

ernstate(Smith, M., 2002b). However, the

phrase is also quite telling. It points on the one

hand to an emergent, modern (european) soci-

ety concerned with distinguishing and elevat-

ing itself in relation to prior and/or culturally

‘Othered’ non-European peoples of the time

(mid-seventeenth to early eighteenth centur-

ies), with disquieting implications vis-a`-vis

imperialism. At the same time, the phrase

points to a preoccupation with defining ‘mod-

ern’ society by separating people from nature,

presumably (and in Locke, for instance, quite

explicitly) legitimating the domination of

nature. In addition to the telos of temporal

progress, there are definite spatialities of

movement invoked here, not least from the

modern, colonizing core to the savage, pre-

modern periphery, as well as from the country

to the city (Whatmore, 2002a, esp. pp. 64–5;

Anderson, 2003: see alsomodernity;primi-

tivism). Contemporary attempts to rethink

nature/culturebinaries may be informed by

considerations of how and why this very binary

was considered by early liberals to be founda-

tional to modern societies, and how the same

binary is constitutive of the emergence of a

distinct body of ‘social’ theory (minus the

[human] body, of course!). sp

Suggested reading

Locke and Peardon (1952 [1690]).

stochastic process A mathematical–statistical

model in which a sequence or pattern of

outcomes is described and modelled in prob-

abilistic terms (Bartlett, 1955). A stochastic

process is one in which the outcomes are

not simply independent or random draws,

but aprocessthroughtimeor acrossspace

in which the outcome at one time-period or

location is in some way dependent on the out-

comes at previous time-periods or, for a spatial

stochastic process, in neighbouring locations.

Amarkov processis an elementary example

of such a process. Stochastic process models

have been used in spatial time-series analysis,

indiseasemodelling andepidemiologyand

inspatial econometrics. lwh

Suggested reading

Bennett (1979); Hepple (1974).

structural adjustment A series of economic

measures, often imposed on governments

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STATE APPARATUS